Fact-Checking Morrison On Climate Change

Saturday Paper - Tim Flannery*

While Scott Morrison claims Australia will meet its Paris climate targets ‘in a canter’, his government’s own modelling predicts it will fall well short, and he has no climate plan past 2020.

Scott Morrison holds a lump of coal in Parliament. ABC

On his first official trip as prime minister Scott Morrison set off on a “drought tour” of south-western Queensland, where for five years communities have been devastated by dry conditions. With Coalition MPs David Littleproud, Michael McCormack and Bridget McKenzie in tow, the prime minister visited the Tully family outside Quilpie – fifth-generation farmers who are struggling to raise their five kids. Asked by reporters about climate change and the long-running drought, Morrison acknowledged “the climate is changing” – a step forward in comparison with some of his predecessors – but dodged any potential link between that fact and his tinder dry surrounds.
“I don’t think people out here care one way or the other,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the issue … I know what you’re trying to ask, okay? I don’t think that’s part of this debate. That’s my point. If people want to have a debate about that, fine … It’s not a debate I’ve participated a lot in, in the past, because I’m practically interested in the policies that will address what is going on here, right now. I’m interested in getting people’s electricity prices down, and I’m not terribly interested in engaging in those sorts of debates at this point.”

Australia’s emissions per capita remain among the highest on the planet.

A few days later, speaking at a Menzies Research Centre forum in Albury, New South Wales, Morrison suggested praying for rain. “I pray for that rain everywhere else around the country,” he said. “And I’d encourage others who believe in the power of prayer to pray for that rain and to pray for our farmers. Please do that.”
This year is shaping up as the driest on record in NSW. Last Friday, the Department of the Environment and Energy released its latest emissions report, which confirmed that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising rather than falling. In the year to March 2018, Australia’s emissions were up 1.3 per cent, driven largely by gas production. This contradicts Morrison’s assertion that Australia is on track to hit its relatively unambitious 2030 target of cutting emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels.
When asked on the ABC’s Insiders program last weekend about Australia’s efforts to meet its Paris climate agreement targets, Morrison replied: “We’re going to meet those in a canter.” Yet even the government’s own modelling has us on track for a mere 5 per cent reduction by 2030. Perhaps Craig Kelly, a prominent Liberal backbencher, offered a more honest summary of his party’s stance on climate change when he said, “The climate was always dangerous. We didn’t make it dangerous, [and] it’s fossil fuels that protect us from that climate.”
The truth is that our emissions are increasing rather than decreasing, and there is no federal policy in place that seems capable of altering that. The Morrison government’s climate policy, or lack thereof, is stranding Australia as a global laggard. The Paris agreement on climate change takes a bottom-up approach in which nations pledge action, then increase their ambitions in subsequent negotiations. As things stand, the total impact of the existing pledges, if they are met, will see average global temperatures rise by about 3.3 degrees by 2100. This is far beyond the agreed target of 2 degrees or less, creating a world in which human life is severely threatened.
Almost everyone understands that without increased ambition we are headed towards catastrophe, which is why most economies are striving to deepen their emissions cuts. California, for example, has recently pledged to make its entire economy carbon neutral by 2045.
When asked further on Insiders about his climate policies, the prime minister pointed to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), which has been operating since 2012. He mentioned the Emissions Reduction Fund, Greg Hunt’s old “Direct Action” program, and the renewable energy target (RET), which John Howard introduced in 2001. All have long been in existence, or are about to end, or both. Some, particularly the CEFC and the RET, have achieved great things, but if they alone had the potential to turn things around, we would have seen the evidence by now. The truth is that since the repeal of the Gillard government’s carbon price, Australia’s emissions from burning fossil fuels have only increased.
Morrison boasted that “emissions per capita are at the lowest level in 28 years”, which is true. However, Australia’s emissions per capita remain among the highest on the planet. This drop has come about because Australia’s population has grown even more strongly than our emissions.
Despite Morrison’s attempts to cast climate change as a future problem, we are already seeing its effects. Global hunger has increased three years running – after previous sustained declines – because of extreme weather. Australians are becoming ever more aware of the impacts of climate change. Anyone who has dived on the Great Barrier Reef north of Townsville recently is likely to have seen the result of the first year-on-year coral bleaching events recorded: nearly 30 per cent of corals on the reef died as a result of the 2016 event, the worst the reef has ever experienced, and the bleaching event was at least 175 times more likely to occur due to intensifying climate change.
Polls show that most Australians want action on climate change, and many Australian industries want to clean up their act. Even the majority of politicians at council, state and federal levels seem to want more effective action on climate change. Many states and territories now have more ambitious targets than the federal government, including South Australia, Queensland, Victoria and the ACT (which is aiming for 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020). At the local level, more than 100 councils are now part of the Cities Power Partnership, a network of local governments and communities helping one another transition to clean power. Every farmer who hosts a wind turbine on their property receives about $10,000 of guaranteed income, regardless of drought, flood or fair season. And regional employment is being created by wind and solar farms.
But the truth is that we are acting very late in the day if we hope to avoid the worst of the looming climate impacts. The only way we can now avoid 1.5 degrees of warming, which on current trends will be felt by about 2040, is if we act immediately to develop means of sucking many gigatons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. There are several ambitious initiatives in their early stages, including carbon engineering and ocean permaculture. Avoiding even 2 degrees of warming looks unlikely without these yet-to-be-scaled-up technologies. And, of course, we must ruthlessly cut emissions – the carbon dioxide we’re emitting today will reach its full warming potential in a few decades, and half of it will linger in the atmosphere for a century, while a quarter will be there until geological processes remove it over many millennia.
Australia has long relied on dodgy accounting in its reports on emissions under global agreements. Under the Kyoto Protocol, we argued that a slowing in land clearing justified the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, and we continue to conflate tree-planting with cutting fossil fuel use. In order to have Australia in the tent, our fellow Kyoto signatories accepted this. But fossil fuels have been held securely underground for tens of millions of years and would have stayed there had we not dug them up, while the carbon in vegetation was recently in the air and will revert to the atmosphere when the vegetation dies.
To make matters worse, unlike buried fossil fuels, carbon stored on land is vulnerable to being returned to the atmosphere, for example through bushfires, insect plagues and changes in land-clearing policies. For these reasons, we should account for fossil fuel use separately from land use and focus on fossil fuel use reduction as the priority.
We don’t have to look far into the future to see how truly bleak things could become unless we change course. The greenhouse gas that will make the 2020s a decade of more severe impacts, and that will turn the 2030s into a decade of increasing climate crisis, is already in the air and oceans.
This week, representatives from 135 countries met in the South Korean capital of Seoul for the 48th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel considered a special report, three years in the making, about the impacts and challenges of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees in the next century. “This is one of the most important meetings in the IPCC’s history,” said IPCC chair Hoesung Lee. In a video message that opened the session, South Korean president Moon Jae-in said climate change posed a threat to the world and the global community needs to act. We have had no statement from Scott Morrison about the IPCC or the 1.5 degree report, which is set to be released next week.
Between now and 2050 we’ll need to transform our carbon-emitting economy into a carbon-absorbing one. That will require enormous investments in innovation across a wide array of technologies and sectors, from clean energy to seaweed aquaculture and carbon fibre production. With Morrison at the helm, we are headed towards a world where food security is diminishing, where drought is the new normal and where our basic requirements of shelter from the elements, water and food security increasingly hang in the balance. Time is now so very short to act that, if the rest of the world was performing as poorly as Australia is in reducing its emissions, all hope would already be lost.

*Tim Flannery is an author, palaeontologist and chief councillor of the Climate Council.

Links

• Architect Of Paris Climate Accord Says Morrison Government's Emissions Stance Is 'Anti-Science'
• Driest Ever September Deepens Australia's Drought
• Australia's Emissions Data Would Shame The Coalition, If Such A Thing Were Possible
• Australia’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Climb Again Amid Climate Policy Vacuum
• In A Country So Dry Even Cows Take Showers, Climate Change Gets Ignored
• Energy Policy Captive To Lobbyists And 'Mad Ideologues', Tim Flannery Says
• Morrison Now Officially Worse Than Abbott On Climate Change

Architect Of Paris Climate Accord Says Morrison Government's Emissions Stance Is 'Anti-Science'

Fairfax - Nicole Hasham

A key architect of the landmark Paris climate deal has lambasted the Coalition government’s inaction on greenhouse gas emissions, saying it “goes against the science”, squanders economic opportunity and risks Australia’s international standing.
Laurence Tubiana, a respected French diplomat and economist, also says Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s claim that Australia will meet its Paris targets “at a canter” is contradicted by international scientific opinion.
Her comments follow an official report on Friday showing Australia’s climate pollution rose by 1.3 per cent in the year to March – the highest quarterly rise in eight years. The troubling findings were released on the eve of the long weekend in some states and on the same day as the banking royal commission interim report - timing critics say was designed to bury the report.

Laurence Tubiana in 2015 arriving for international climate talks in Paris. Credit: Philippe Wojazer/Pool Photo via AP

Since assuming the prime ministership last month Mr Morrison has dumped the National Energy Guarantee, which would have curbed emissions from the electricity sector, and declared Australia would not join other signatories to the Paris deal in ratcheting up emissions reduction targets by 2020 in line with climate science.
Ms Tubiana is a former French ambassador for international climate negotiations who played a major role in brokering the 2015 Paris treaty. She is now chief executive of the European Climate Foundation.

Then-treasurer Scott Morrison holding a piece of coal in question time last year as part of a show of support for the industry. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

She described as “concerning” Mr Morrison’s refusal in the next parliamentary term to revise the Paris targets beyond Australia’s current commitment – a 26 per cent cut by 2030, based on 2005 levels.
She said most emission reduction commitments made at the Paris talks, including Australia’s, were “insufficient” to achieve the goals of the treaty - which aims to keep global warming to well below 2°C - and the international community expected Australia to go further.
“[Mr Morrison's stance] goes against the science, spirit and letter of the Paris agreement. As we see other countries preparing to increase their levels of ambition, I strongly urge Australia not to fall behind,” Ms Tubiana told Fairfax Media.
“The Australian government, along with all others, needs to listen to the science and the economics, and lead the country towards decarbonisation.
“Failure to do so will have profound consequences on the country’s standing in the international community and its future prospects in terms of innovation and economic opportunity.”
Mr Morrison has repeatedly insisted Australia will meet the 2030 Paris commitment, despite projections from organisations including the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, as well as the government’s own forecasts, showing emissions are set to badly overrun the target.


Prime Minister Scott Morrison believes his Government will meet emissions targets despite a report finding Australia’s climate pollution rose by 1.3 per cent in the year to March.

“We're going to meet those in a canter, our 26 per cent target ... we have the policies in place and importantly, the technology, the demand management. All of these issues are pointing to that outcome,” he told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
However Ms Tubiana rejected this assertion, saying “the consensus in the scientific community is that Australia is not currently on track to reduce emissions and meet its Paris Agreement commitments”.
This is despite Australia’s “bountiful” renewable energy potential and major economic gains to be won by those at the forefront of the technology, she said.
Leaked drafts of a major new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a summary of which is due for release on Monday, suggest global warming will exceed the critical 1.5°C threshold by 2040 unless rapid and drastic action is taken.
Environment Minister Melissa Price said Australia was responsible for just 1.3 per cent of global emissions.
"We will do our part, but climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution," she said.
However Ms Tubiana said Australia was a G20 country in the top 20 emitters and was “not a small player” in global climate action efforts.
“Given Australia’s extreme vulnerability to climate change, as we have seen with the massive damage to the Great Barrier Reef, and the harrowing images of the epic drought across eastern Australia, Australia has a vital national interest in the entire world implementing the Paris agreement in full,” she said.


The Federal Government delayed an emissions report due to the country's failure to lower its greenhouse gas pollution.

Ms Price said Australia "has a proud history of meeting our international commitments" and current policies could be scaled up.
"We have comfortably beaten our first Kyoto target, we will beat our 2020 Kyoto target, and we will meet the responsible 2030 Paris target. Australia’s emissions are currently at their lowest level on a per capita and GDP basis in 28 years," she said.
Critics dismiss the per capita and GDP reduction as irrelevant because overall national emissions continue to rise.
They also say claims that Australia will meet its Kyoto targets are misleading because Australia claims emissions reductions based on reduced land clearing after 1990 - a year when clearing rates were unusually high.

Links

• 'Terrible': Rising gas output lifts Australia's greenhouse gas emissions
• Taxpayers spend $10 million on expert board but still no energy plan
• Scott Morrison's views on climate change, unions and Labor's fairness test
• Mitigation Policies for the Paris Agreement: An Assessment for G20 Countries
• Australian emissions to 'far exceed' 2030 Paris pledge as need for action rises: UN
• Australia’s emissions projections 2017 (pdf)

Driest Ever September Deepens Australia's Drought

Reuters - Tom Westbrook

SYDNEY - Australia had its driest September on record last month, and though spring rains are forecast this week across parts of the continent’s east that has seen the worst drought in years, the season is predicted to offer little relief from the dry weather.

Tracks made by sheep can be seen in a drought-effected paddock on a farm located on the outskirts of the town of Coolah in central New South Wales, Australia, September 17, 2018. REUTERS/David Gray

The country’s east coast has recorded less than a fifth of its typical rainfall over the last three months to September and is barren, with winter crops failed and graziers buying in grain to feed their herds.
Wheat production has been cut to its lowest in a decade, the wool clip and wine crush are set to drop and the drought has already swung crop protection company Nufarm Ltd to an annual loss.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said on Wednesday the year so far is the second-driest recorded in the country’s biggest river catchment, the Murray-Darling since records began in 1900, and last month was the driest September logged.
That’s pushed soil moisture, which can take months to replenish, “very much below average” across a vast swathe of the continent stretching from the outback Kimberley region in Western Australia to cropping and pastureland in the southeast.
Falls up to 25 mm (1 inch) are forecast in drought-wizened central New South Wales state on Thursday, with lighter rain predicted lasting until Saturday, the bureau said, though the coming three months are still forecast drier than average.
“For the grain side of things it’s too little too late and I’d imagine it’s probably the same for sheep areas,” said Matt Dalgleish, trading manager at agricultural consultant Mecardo.
“There might be some cattle producers, if they’ve still got stock, to get a little bit of growth in pasture but it’s probably not going to be enough to carry them through summer.”

Links

• Australia in September 2018 - Bureau of Meteorology
• Rainfall tallies plummet after Australia's driest September on record
• In A Country So Dry Even Cows Take Showers, Climate Change Gets Ignored
• Geologists Are Feuding About The Collapse Of Civilization
• Drought-Stricken Farmers Challenge Coalition's Climate Change Stance In TV Ad
• 'He Will Fail Farmers': Morrison Pressured To Tackle Climate Change As Part Of Drought Pledge
• Is Climate Change Supercharging Drought In Australia?
• 'Absolutely Daft': How Did We End Up Getting Climate Policy So Wrong?
• Australia Is Devastated By Drought, Yet It Won't Budge On Climate Change
• Australia Struggles With A Devastating Drought While The Government Ignores Climate Change
• Drought in Australia Turns Farmland to Barren Dustbowl: Heartbreaking Photos

Young Women More Likely To Care About Climate Change: Study

Fairfax - Mary Ward

Young women are much more likely to care about climate change than young men, a small Australian study has found.
According to a survey of students aged 18-33 at Western Sydney University, young women are eight times more likely to believe processes of climate change will affect their lives than their male counterparts.

Young women are more likely to be concerned by climate change. Photo: Stocksy

Tonia Gray, associate professor at Western Sydney University's School of Education and a co-author of the study, said she believed the result was, in part, because women are more likely to possess a "legacy mindset".
"They are concerned for the next generation. They are thinking: What am I going to leave? How am I going to make the world a better place."
The results are in line with US and European studies, which have also shown women are more likely to believe in climate change than men. A 2005 University of Oregon analysis found countries with higher numbers of women in parliament were more likely to have ratified environmental treaties.
Globally, women are also more likely to be impacted by the effects of climate change than men. The UN estimates 80 per cent of the people displaced by climate change are women.
The group surveyed by Western Sydney University had, like all people born after February 1985, only ever lived in a world with rising monthly temperatures.
While all those surveyed said they had heard about climate change, only half were able to name a key event that had occurred in the previous year related to climate change.
When asked to describe their emotions towards climate change, "fear" was the most common response, with 47 per cent of survey participants choosing this emotion. In contrast, 17 per cent of respondents said they had "no emotion" about climate change, a response given by nearly twice as many surveyed men than women.
Just over half (51 per cent) of those surveyed thought they could not personally change the course of climate change, with women more optimistic about the impact of their individual contribution.
The young people surveyed cited climate scientists as the people they trusted most for information about climate change. Politicians were rated as the least reliable source of information on climate change, followed by social media.

Links

• Climate Change Is Everyone's Problem. Women Are Ready To Solve It
• Mary Robinson Launches New Feminist Fight Against Climate Change
• Climate Change A 'Man-Made Problem With A Feminist Solution' Says Robinson
• Margaret Atwood: Women Will Bear Brunt Of Dystopian Climate Future
• Where Women Lead On Climate Change
• Indigenous Women Show The Way For Banks To Divest From Fossil Fuels
• Climate Change 'Impacts Women More Than Men'
• Women Key To Fight Against Climate Change
• When Environmental Crises Hit Homes, Women Suffer The Most
• To Stop Climate Change, Educate Girls And Give Them Birth Control
• Lack Of Women In Energy ‘Holding Back Fight Against Climate Change’

'This Drought Is Different': It's Drier And Hotter – And Getting Worse

The Guardian - Gabrielle Chan

On the land and in the towns they’re affected to varying degrees; some find it harder to cope. But they all agree something has changed

An olive grove on Sommariva station, owned by Karen McLennan and her son Michael McLennan. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian 

The Guardian The new normal? How climate change is making droughts worse In the first part of a new series, we take you through the current conditions, and then put them in context with other severe droughts in Australia’s history. READ MORE

If you don’t fully appreciate the complexity of rural communities, farmer Peter Schmidt is not the sort of bloke you would be expecting in the Mulga Lands.
His place is 21,000 hectares – 52,000 acres in the old money – and his family have been there since his grandfather selected blocks in the 1890s.
The closest town is Wyandra, a blip on the highway on the way to Cunnamulla from Charleville – a drive that reveals the disused fences of smaller blocks long abandoned as unsustainable.
Schmidt though is still at his homestead at Alawoona, its sheds and outbuildings surrounded by a metre-high levee, standing like a bad joke in their sixth year of drought.
He put it in after the 2012 flood, which washed a foot of water through his house. Problem is, that flood heralded the start of the dry and it pretty much hasn’t rained since.
He jokes with station hand Joe that he cursed the place and might have to break the levee to bring on the rain.
But far from being a man of superstition, Schmidt is a rural scientist, with two masters degrees – one each in rural education and cattle behaviour. He has a softly spoken manner and a sense of humour born in the Mulga.

Scientist farmer Peter Schmidt with his partner Kathryn James on Alawoona, near Wyandra , Queensland. Monday 20 August 2018. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Alawoona station with homestead and levee, owned by Peter Schmidt and Kathryn James. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

“We’re mad here, we are in the most unreliable area, the most unreliable climate in the most unreliable continent,” he says.
“Well, it’s unreliably reliable,” says his partner, Kathryn.

‘Dry eight years in a row’
Schmidt first started thinking about climate change after seeing a program on the astronaut Neil Armstrong who, before he went to space, thought the earth’s atmosphere was like the peel of an orange. In the pictures of space, Schmidt could see that the thickness of the atmosphere was more like an onion skin, and it stayed with him.

Alawoona, near Wyandra, Queensland.

Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

“I kept that in the back of my mind and then you hear things like there’s a million new cars put on the road every year in Australia belching out exhaust fumes – and these coal-fired things – something has to happen in that very confined space of the atmosphere. I think it’s happening.”
It is the middle of winter when we drop in, and though the fine day stretches over the place like a shroud, there is a chilly wind that blows through the mulga. Schmidt welcomes us into a small closed kitchen as he loads some old gidgee (Acacia cambagei or stinking wattle) into the wood stove and offers us a coffee.
Schmidt has lived through many droughts but it’s the big ones he remembers – 1958, 1965, 1983. While southern Australia suffered through the Millennium drought during the noughties, up in the Mulga Lands, Schmidt says it was “dry for eight years in a row”.
Every one is different but this time Schmidt has noticed one change from previous droughts has been the higher temperature.
“The essential thing was there were two or three periods there where the temperature was above 40C for 15 days in a row and it just sapped all the moisture out of the soil,” Schmidt says. “That’s the difference between this drought and the others.”
He had 100mm on the backblocks of his place last November, 59mm in March and very little since then.

It doesn’t stop with one rainfall
Drought has long been a part of the Australian climate and features in Indigenous stories and history. Indigenous agricultural and land management practices, documented by historians such as Bruce Pascoe and Bill Gammage, consider drought as a subjective notion – that is, it’s a state of mind. This is replicated among today’s landholders, reflected back in comments like these: “the only thing we know about drought is that it will end”. That is, it is a period that needs to be managed, like any other.

Donkeys guard sheep against attacks from wild dogs on Andrew and Louise Martin’s station, Macfarlane, near Tambo, Queensland. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian 

Then there is the scientific definition of drought. According to the Bureau of Meterology, drought is serious or severe rainfall deficiency – essentially a period of prolonged dryness.
By this measure, south-west Queensland has experienced almost seven years of dry times. Yet when Guardian Australia visited the region, locals were keen to reject some commonly held assumptions. Drought is not uniform. Parts of Queensland have been in drought for seven years but it does not mean those communities have not had any rain. Drought doesn’t stop with one rainfall. Even in NSW, which is 100% drought-declared, some areas are not strictly in drought. Each region responds differently to drought and has different assets and challenges. All of the community is affected by drought, not just farmers. Businesses, shops and social events can close down as people hunker down and stop spending. Not every farmer is male – businesses are mostly partnerships – and not every farmer is on her last legs.
Many farmers have taken advantage of rain when it does come, by making hay and stockpiling other fodder. Many are careful to protect their pastures and therefore their soil by selling or locking up livestock and feeding – a practice known as drought lotting – in dry times. Others over-graze and accelerate land degradation. This explains why driving through the countryside you can see one side of a fence is as bare as a board and the other with foot-high pasture. And yet, no matter how much you prepare, it is hard to manage for seven lean years with a business, bills to pay and an average farm debt. Land management is key.

Andrew and Louise Martin on Macfarlane station. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

“It’s so much easier to be a good manager in a wet year,” Augathella farmer Rachelle Cameron says. “There is grass everywhere and no stress.”

Summers ‘so scorchingly hot’
Four hours north of Wyandra, Louise and Andrew (Marto) Martin are sheep growers on the Mitchell Grass plains near Tambo, 860kms north-west of Brisbane. Looking out over the high grass, it doesn’t look too bad, certainly not the desert landscape pictures that metropolitan audiences are used to in drought. Macfarlane station is on an ancient inland sea – the Martin’s fossil collection contains ammonites and Huon pine, spat out of the black soil plains that expand and contract depending on the water content.
Both Martins work the farm, while Andrew is also mayor of the Blackall-Tambo region. This year they got a bit of autumn rain and made 200 bales of hay. They reduced their stocking rate to match the season, as much as is possible with lambing ewes. They’re not in favour of what Marto calls “agrarian socialism”, believing that subsidies create dependency.
“The best way of dealing with drought is accepting you are going to have one,” Andrew says.

Andrew Martin drives along an exclusion fence on Macfarlane station. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian 

He takes the longer view on climate, which he describes as always changing, while Louise echoes Schmidt’s experience that higher temperatures have been a feature of the latest drought.
“It’s quite unusual to get over 40C here but this last summer and the last couple of summers have been so scorchingly hot,” she says. “You can see the water being sucked out of the dams, sucked out of the soil, sucked out of my life and you can’t plan for that.
“The way to plan for drought is you just have to make a decision and if you haven’t got enough grass, you sell [stock].”

‘Policy adverse to diversification’
Karen and Bill McLennan and their son Michael are in the Mulga Lands on the highway to Roma, just outside Charleville. Their diversification plan was an olive plantation – Sommariva Olives – made into oil, soap, tapenades and other products. They are trying to stay agile, in the government’s words, to drought-proof. Bill and Karen also work in the panel-beating business in Charleville through the week; they spread themselves thin in an effort to survive the climate and the conditions.

Karen McLennan and her son Michael McLennan. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Karen describes the good times, when the grass is above their knees, but looking out from their back deck off the olive shed, it is all mulga and red dirt. The olives get enough water to yield a crop every second year. She describes a life that is filled with work, in the panel shop, in the olive shed, in the mulga. The olives were to be the retirement plan, but their oil won awards and it has increased the cashflow in dry times.
“You do get a bit sick of it, she says. “You often say, I want to get out. I have had enough, I just want to get out. But you can’t really sell when it’s this dry, you have to wait for the rain, and then hopefully, if you want to get out, you get out then when it looks nice. But probably everyone else thinks the same way so the market will be flooded.”
They find government policies frustrating, the rhetoric encouraging farmers to diversify while erecting hurdles, or as Michael says, “government policy is actually adverse to diversification, it’s crazy”.

Sommariva station, a cattle and olive business outside Charleville, Queensland. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

The entrance to Sommariva station. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Karen applied for some assistance to restructure their finances and was knocked back on account of their income from the panel-beating shop.
“Like my husband says, when we are in drought, this whole area is in drought,” she says. “Our business in town struggles as well, because people can’t spend money in town. We get hit there as well as out here.”
Pressure has increased on the family after the bank revalued their properties and stock as a result of the downturn in conditions, which changes the interest payments.
Like all the farmers we speak to, they appreciate the city’s donations, though they have not received anything. Hay is tricky, given once you start feeding cattle, you have to keep going. One or two bales will not last long.
One of the big movements in farming practice over recent years is towards grazing practices that respond to climate rather than keeping a set number of stock no matter what the climate. There are a number of farmers now who sell down stock and close down for dry periods but this requires a certain equity level. For the McLennans, it is not an option.

It’s easy to say you need to destock going into a drought – but you can’t
Michael McLennan

“It’s easy to say you need to destock going into a drought, but you can’t,” Michael says. “The cost of getting into one of these places, you have to keep producing because if you don’t, how do you meet your loans? What is your income? In drought, costs go up, but cattle prices go down because no one else can buy for the next year.”
North west of the McLennans, Doug and Rachelle Cameron live on the old station of Nive Downs, originally over 738 square miles with its own post office and general store. It was split up in the 1960s and the couple have been on 34,000 acres north of Augathella since 2004.
Conditions were pretty good for the first few years, then it flooded before sliding into drought. They have cut their herd down from 1,300 to 900 and are preparing for the possibility they will not get their usual summer rain. In a normal year, the Cameron family gets 19 inches of annual rainfall on Nive Downs, yet near the end of August they have only had six. Talk turns to what normal is.
“The new norm seems to be drier and hotter over the years we have been here, with our average summer temperatures,” Rachelle says. “I wouldn’t say [climate change] is not happening. It seems to be all or nothing in the country.”

Doug and Rachelle Cameron and their children Stirling, 11, Ella, 8, and Grace, 6. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

The Camerons are trying to increase cash flow by diversifying into production of their Nive Beef jerky. Doug hit on it after a cattle price crash due to the 2011 temporary live export ban. At a roadhouse on the way back from the saleyards, he saw a 25g packet of beef jerky for $5 after he just sold cattle for $50 a head.Doug was sick of being a price taker. “It didn’t matter what I did to the cattle – we could have the best genetics, the best everything – but outside influences just crushed us. I thought maybe we can make something out of the jerky and set the price.”
Around Augathella, they grow their haystack in summer and cattle eat it down in winter. By autumn, they know whether they will have enough feed to get through the winter, and for the past five years it has never been enough, so they have sold off cattle.
“This year is worse than every other year. We are missing all that growth, lately it’s been late rain, with a [short] eight-week window to grow before it cools out. You are not getting bulk feed through and that’s what hurt us in the community.”

Doug and Rachelle Cameron and their children Stirling, Ella and Grace at a feeding point on their property, Nive Downs. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Farmers are not the only ones to suffer in drought. Dave* lost his job on a big cotton farm in a small northern NSW town when the drought started to bite. There was not enough water and the farmer cut back his cropping program. Like many farm workers, a cottage was part of his package. So when he lost his job, Dave and wife Margie* also lost their house.
There was no redundancy package because the employer was not large enough. Dave was reeling from the job loss but Margie got active. The couple, in their late 50s, were carrying a bit of debt from the last drought when they were left unpaid for contracting work. So while looking for a new home, Margie also contacted their bank to apply for hardship provisions which the bank duly provided. But when a good friend gave them some money to tide them over, the bank dropped the hardship provision.
Margie applied to Centrelink for Newstart, but given the couple have had various micro businesses, the application process was arduous to prove they had no hidden assets. She also contacted high profile drought charities who told her because they were not farmers, they could not help. Sixteen weeks after losing their job and home, they were still waiting for Newstart.
The only assistance they have received is from the Country Womens Association, which pays up to $3000 for household expenses such as fuel, power, insurance and the like. Another city based charity arrived with groceries, lining up donated goods like a supermarket at a local hall.
“The government needs to look after people who become unemployed with the drought,” Margie said. “There is no focus on contractors, the small businesses, it’s hard to get Centrelink assistance and those people end up leaving town.”
The dry weather also places pressure on regular social events such as picnic races, campdrafts and other gatherings, which are important economically and socially. At a time when people need to keep an eye on others, the usual events can disappear from a town calendar, having a material effect on the state of mind of its inhabitants.

‘Women get depressed as much as the next man’
Christine McDougall is the director for mental health, alcohol and other drugs for the South West Hospital and Health Service under the Queensland government. Based in Roma, her patch is one of the largest health services in the state, covering 320,000 square kilometres, but there are only 29,000 people scattered across that vast “corner country”. McDougall has been a mental health nurse since 1974 but she says it makes her cry to drive around Charleville and Cunnamulla and see the effect on the community, first of the floods of 2012, which wrecked the soil and land, and now the latest drought.There are no mental health beds in the south west, and people are transported by the Royal Flying Doctors Service if necessary. The service aims to keep people in their own community, using local hospitals and providing full support as much as possible, via telehealth consultations and regular visits by clinicians.

Service director of mental health at Queensland’s South West Hospital and Health Service, Christine McDougall, at her clinic in Roma, Queensland. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Links

• The land falls silent: Australian farmers battle life without rain
• 'It's dire': farmers battle their worst drought in 100 years – photo essay
• Australia's drought crisis and farmers' stories of anxiety, fear and resilience
• If you’re talking about drought but not climate change, you’re not doing your job, PM
• Australian Landscape Water Balance
• Climate Change in Australia
• Temperature anomaly data, rainfall maps, rainfall anomaly data
• The cancer eating away at farms
• Interactive: 100 years of drought in Australia
• Recent Australian droughts may be the worst in 800 years
• Is Australia’s current drought caused by climate change? It’s complicated

Storm Warning For The Fossil-Fuel Industry

Project Syndicate -  Daniel Litvin*

A spate of extreme weather events this year will no doubt intensify the political pressure on fossil-fuel firms in the coming years. How oil and gas companies manage their growing political challenges will be just as important for their valuation as their day-to-day operations are now.

Glenn Hunt/Getty Images

LONDON – This has been a year of extreme weather events, from the “Beast from the East” that froze much of the United Kingdom in March to Hurricane Florence on the US East Coast and Typhoon Mangkhut in the Philippines. Scientists generally hesitate to say that any particular natural disaster is the result of climate change, but the overall intensity of storms certainly appears to be linked to the accumulation of human-generated greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere.
But in the minds of many, assigning blame need not wait for full scientific certainty. There are tens of millions of people whose lives have been severely affected by natural disasters, and perhaps billions who have noticed changing weather patterns in recent years. Like a growing share of politicians and most of the media, many of these people are becoming convinced that our reliance on fossil fuels is one of the underlying causes.
The fossil-fuel industry is a legitimate target for criticism, given that its products account for the bulk of annual GHG emissions. “Big Oil” firms, in particular, have been hit by a number of actions relating to their role in climate change. In addition to protests at their sites in recent years, they have faced shareholder resolutions demanding a shift toward renewable energy sources, divestment campaigns, and a growing number of climate-related lawsuits, particularly in the United States.
Yet, if anything, the political siege of the fossil-fuel industry has only just begun. Even if extreme weather events do not turn out to be as frightening as climate scientists predict, the public will most likely increasingly direct its ire at the industry whenever there is a major hurricane, flood, typhoon, heat wave, or freezing spell.
Moreover, as awareness of climate change spreads, politicians and the public will need a simple and easy target to blame. To be sure, one could point the finger at the billions of consumers who drive gasoline-powered cars and rely on fossil fuels to heat and light their homes. But any politician hoping to win an election would be foolish to blame the voters.
In practice, this means that fossil-fuel firms – particularly those headquartered in OECD countries – will have to navigate an intensely contested operating environment in the coming years. In terms of shareholder value, managing social and political challenges will be no less important than finding and producing hydrocarbons.
Nowadays, much of the shareholder activism against the industry focuses on the extent to which firms’ hydrocarbon reserves ultimately may prove commercially nonviable as the world shifts away from fossil fuels. But in the near term, the political backlash against the industry will pose a bigger threat to valuations than will “stranded assets.”
That backlash could come in a variety of forms. Divestment campaigns are likely to gain steam and attract larger shareholders. Climate-related lawsuits could begin to extend further beyond the US, ultimately leading to multi-billion-dollar damage awards, as in the cases against Big Tobacco. Protest movements to disrupt on-shore operations could become routine. And governments could decide to impose moratoriums on new hydrocarbon development, or to levy punitive taxes on fossil-fuel firms. In fact, the government of New Zealand recently banned all future offshore oil and gas exploration – a move that other countries ultimately may follow.
Why should anyone shed tears for Big Oil and its investors? After all, many of the political pressures described here are helpful for tackling climate change, which requires reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and accelerating the shift to renewable energies.
Still, an unthinking backlash against fossil-fuel firms could also have some perverse effects. Politicians may use it to deflect attention from the slow pace of national energy policy reform. In most countries, such reform is urgently needed to meet climate targets. Also, even in a scenario in which the average global temperature increase is kept within 2° Celsius of pre-industrial levels (the upper limit under the 2015 Paris climate agreement), fossil fuels will still need to be produced. Like a giant supertanker, the global energy system cannot be turned around on a dime. The shift away from fossil fuels will take many years, during which oil, gas, and coal will remain in demand.
In light of these realities, one risk of the intensified political backlash against fossil-fuel firms is that the industry could be pushed into the shadows. Instead of shrinking in size or focusing on a transition to renewables, the industry might shift production to private rather than publicly listed firms. Or production could migrate to less transparent firms in non-OECD countries.
In either case, these corporate entities will be less susceptible to pressure from progressive activists and socially focused investors. Less scrupulous producers will be happy to keep exploring and extracting with abandon, because they will feel even less obliged than the distrusted bosses of Big Oil and Big Coal to demonstrate that they are helping to reduce GHG emissions. As the movement to tackle climate change continues to shape its strategy for the years ahead, this is one risk that it must keep in mind.

*Daniel Litvin is Managing Director of Critical Resource, a consultancy that advises resource firms on sustainability and “license to operate” risk, and the author of Empires of Profit: Commerce, Conquest, and Corporate Responsibility. 

Links

• The Trial of the Century
• New Zealand bans all new offshore oil exploration as part of 'carbon-neutral future'
• Social Solidarity for Sustainable Development
• The Case Against Climate Despair
• Global Warming’s Paper Trail
• The Masses Are Mobilizing for Climate Leadership
• For Whom the Climate Bell Tolls
• The Climate Fight’s Next Turning Point
• A Global Environmental Threat Made in China

Which Cities Will Sink Into The Sea First? Maybe Not The Ones You Expect

The Guardian - Mark Miodownik*

The Earth isn’t solid – which makes it hard to predict how the submerging of our coastlines will unfold

Cape Denison, east Antarctica. ‘If the Antarctic ice melts before the Greenland ice sheet, the whole of North America’s eastern coast will go under water first.’ Photograph: Pauline Askin/Reuters 

Better scientific understanding of global warming makes the discussion about its geopolitical consequences increasingly urgent.
Put simply, there are going to be winners and losers: hotter places and colder places; wetter places and drier places; and, yes, places that disappear under the sea.
 But the reality is a bit more complicated.
In particular, are sea levels going up or down? The answer seems clear when you consider that Antarctica has lost 3 trillion tonnes of ice in the last 25 years.
Yet to understand what is going on we first have to recognise that the Earth isn’t solid. It started life as a ball of hot liquid about 4.5bn years ago and our planet has been cooling ever since.
Right at the centre of the Earth is a solid core of metal made of iron and nickel at a temperature of approximately 5,000C.
But this core is surrounded by an approximately 2,000km-thick ocean of molten metal, again mostly iron and nickel. Surrounding this is a layer of rock called the mantle that is between 500C to 900C, and at these red-hot temperatures the rock behaves like a solid over short periods of time (seconds, hours, and days) but like a liquid over longer time periods (months to years) – so the rock flows, even though it is not molten.
On top of the fluid mantle floats the crust, which is like the skin of the Earth. It is a relatively thin layer of cool rock that is between 30 to 100km thick and contains all the mountains, forests, rivers, seas, continents – our world.
Since the crust is floating on the fluid mantle, if you increase its weight by, for instance, building up kilometres of ice on top of it, then it sinks further into the mantle. This is what has happened to the landmasses of Antarctica and Greenland, which are both covered in 2km to 3km of thick ice.
If global warming were to cause all that ice to melt, then the sea level of the oceans would rise by more than 50 metres, submerging all the coastal cities of the world and making hundreds of millions of people homeless.
This seems obvious. What is less obvious is how it might unfold.
If the whole ice sheet covering Antarctica melts, the release of its weight will destress the rocks below, which, because they float on the mantle, will bob up. This is called post-glacial rebound.
The position with Greenland is similar: the crust below it is being weighed down by the 3 million trillion litres of water held in the ice sheet, and if that ice sheet all melts then parts of the North American tectonic landmass will rise up.
If the resulting increase in the height of the continent is bigger than the sea level rise, then major flooding may be avoided. Working out which scenario is more likely is vitally important for future generations, because one of these results will start to play out if global warming intensifies.
What we know is this: the global mean sea level has risen 20cm since the beginning of the 20th century. Some of this has been owing to the water thermally expanding as the oceans have got hotter – since hotter liquids take up more volume (this is how liquid thermometers work).
Some of the rise in sea level has been due to the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melting, and some due to other glaciers melting.
The rising sea levels are global: they affect everyone with a coastline, from tiny Pacific islands that would be entirely submerged to a huge country such as Bangladesh, for which a one-metre rise in sea levels would result in nearly a fifth of the country being submerged and 30 million people being displaced.
 But while rising sea levels affect everyone, the post-glacial rebound affects only the coasts connected to parts of the Earth’s crust weighed down by the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
It is hard to overestimate the importance of this issue, and we badly need more data and scientific understanding of these liquid processes.
A limited number of specialised satellites, such as CryoSat, GRACE and ICESat-2 – just launched by Nasa – are being used to monitor ice thickness and to develop models of post-glacial rebound. What the science predicts is that if the ice melts first in the northern hemisphere, then Greenland may bounce up higher than the average sea level, as will parts of North America, and so sea levels there may initially go down.
If the opposite happens, and the Antarctic ice melts before the Greenland ice sheet, then it is the southern tectonic plates that will bounce up first and the whole of North America’s eastern coast will go under water first. The big unknowns are how quick the ice will go in each location, and how fast the post-glacial rebound will be.
We need to get a better understanding of these processes fast, because if we don’t it may be too late to avert catastrophe. These issues don’t dominate news agendas but they should.
Recently the French environment minister resigned, citing the president’s lack of progress and urgency on climate change issues. In doing so, he voiced the concern of the whole scientific community about world leaders – we need a step change in governmental action.
But there’s the rub: not all governments feel urgent about it. And why? Perhaps it’s because, as the issue of post-glacial rebound shows, there will be winners and losers from global warming. For instance, countries such as Russia will be less affected by sea level rises, and may benefit from a more temperate climate.
In contrast, the US may not only suffer from new drought zones, but its low-lying eastern coast is threatened by the accelerating loss of Antarctic ice.
As the 21st century continues and the ice continues to melt, it will become clearer which countries have a greater incentive to mitigate climate change, and the resulting geopolitics has the potential to drive division and conflict.

*Mark Miodownik is the author of Liquid: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives, which is short-listed for the Royal Society Book prize

Links

• The speed of #MeToo gives me hope – we can still stop climate change
• From Miami to Shanghai: 3C of warming will leave world cities below sea level
• The three-degree world: the cities that will be drowned by global warming
• Antarctica loses three trillion tonnes of ice in 25 years